


honesty among thieves

by katsidhe



Series: episode codas [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cage Trauma, Coda, Episode: s13e12 Various and Sundry Villains, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Abuse, Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 15:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13662144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsidhe/pseuds/katsidhe
Summary: Sam doesn't fear talking to Rowena the way he fears talking to Dean.Coda to 13.12.





	honesty among thieves

When Dean said, “How about _honestly_ ,” Sam had opened his mouth and started, and found he couldn't finish. There's so much that’s been left unsaid, years and years, that when he finally tried, the words got caught somewhere.  

 

Sam's head hurts. He needs coffee. He’s desperate to sleep but knows he won’t be able to. 

What Dean doesn’t get is that Sam _can’t_ talk to Dean about this. It’s not that Dean wouldn’t understand. Or maybe it is, how would Sam know, because they’ve _never_ fucking talked about it. Not the torture part, though Dean knows too much about that. And not the other parts either. 

The parts that—Rowena had called it an abusive relationship.

And, and, the cosmic mind-shattering scope of it. Sam has seen the faces of demons and felt them inside him, he’s drunk of their power. He tries not to think about it these days. How it felt. How the worst of it was not the otherworldly power of it, but the familiarity. It spoke to something inside Sam, and it has never let him forget that demons are, at the end of the day, corrupted humans.  

Archangels are not human. _Yeah, Sam, well-spotted_. He’s reached the kitchen. He tops up the coffee machine, pours the water in.  

Dean treats everything like it’s human. He snarks at gods, he calls angels by nicknames, he pops the pop references. Dean’s devils get fitted down to life-size. 

Sam envies him that casual, shattering insolence. 

Sam envies other things, too. When Dean gets sad or scared—which is plenty often, Dean is an open book as much as he likes to pretend otherwise—Dean can still talk. He might be brusque and grim, he might punch a wall and be dismissive, he might be vulnerable and frank, he might even be cruel, but he talks. Eventually.  

Dean’s a force worn cold and tired and ragged, every emotion written on his face and his sleeve. Dean feels so deeply, so desperately, that he spreads a suffocating fog or a buoyant energy wherever he goes. He fills the room. He’s a vortex that Sam can’t help but get dragged back into, again and again. Dean lives so firmly in the real world. Sam doesn’t even know what the real world means anymore—if he ever did, with Heaven and Hell pulling all the strings since the beginning.

The coffee’s finished, so Sam fills a mug and heads back to the library. 

All that stuff wouldn’t matter, shouldn’t matter, if Sam could just _talk_. Because, yeah, there’s a lot of it that wouldn’t even need an explanation, with Dean. Like, the ripped-apart-while-you-can’t-die kinda stuff. He’d get that. There’s a lot of depressing commonality, with him and Dean.

Maybe that’s part of why Sam’s never tried to explain. Maybe the understanding is, well, understood. 

Or maybe it’s not. Because sometimes Dean says things like, _we’ll work through it like we always do, you and me_ , or sometimes Dean puts an angel in Sam to keep him from dying. Sometimes Sam can’t bear to look at him and Dean doesn’t understand why.

But Rowena—Sam remembers the look on her face, on that ill-fated trip to hell two years ago. The Darkness was looming, consuming, and the visions were telling him he had to do it, so he went back. Rowena wasn’t afraid. She was incandescent. Dressed for an expensive date, boiling over in excitement. When the warding failed (when she sabotaged the warding), Sam remembers her glee. 

She knows better now. Sam sips his coffee. He burns his tongue a little, but the heat feels good. 

 Rowena doesn’t know Sam. Sam doesn’t know Rowena. Sam doesn’t even _like_ Rowena. She’s dangerous, and a liar, and so selfish she didn’t even love her own son until he was dead. She’s powerful and old and manipulative and casually cruel. People are objects to her.

Why did he talk to Rowena, then? _The look on her face_ , Sam reasons. _You pitied her, that was all_. 

No. More than that. It shook him to see her like that. She wears shallowness on her sleeve; she’s so transparently manipulative that the truths are easy to miss. It shook him to see her truly afraid, to believe her fear. To see her untouchable, vapid mask slide off. 

To sit in the car and hear her _ask_ him, vulnerable. So Sam answered. More than he meant to. He’s not sure if he regrets it. He’s not sure of anything, hasn’t been for a long time. When Lucifer talks to you it’s enough to make you doubt the sky.

Sam contemplates, just for a moment, going to Dean and saying—he doesn’t even know what, he can’t even start in his own head. It all breaks down so completely into paralysis.  

Saying, do you remember when they did this, or that, when they tore us apart, when they made it horrible, when they made it hurt, I’m sorry to ask, but which hurt worse, for you, was it the fire or the hooks. 

Do you remember? Do you know? Do you understand, please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but do you understand?

Or saying— he could say— 

_His face made me wish I could go blind and insane, but he wouldn’t let me. He made me keep looking. It hurt, all the way down to my soul, I could feel him there. But it was sublime. Beautiful beyond words. Like a star. It was too much. Sometimes I thought I loved it. Sometimes I told him that while my eyes burned out._

 

Sam’s cold. He must have lost time, because his coffee’s cold too. He definitely can’t say all that. 

Here’s what happens if Sam says all that to Dean: Dean flinches back in disgust, says, lip curled, _god_ ,  _Sam, always with the hard-on for evil._ No, okay, no, that, at least, Sam doesn’t fear. He doesn’t. Not really, not usually. He hasn’t for awhile, anyway.  

Here’s what happens instead: Dean looks at him with an uncertain, twisted compassion—desperation and rage and horrified pity, filled to the brim with all the emotions Sam can’t handle, more violent for what they can’t comprehend, and underlying that a yawning well of separation. The confirmation that _this_ really is the thing that keeps them from understanding each other the way Sam imagines they used to, once upon a time. Sam is something _other_. The distance between them is hammered in with bloody spikes, a chasm too big for either of them to bridge, this horrific huge abyss Sam can’t explain and Dean can’t grasp.   

Or, worst of all: Dean looks at Sam, and Dean _knows_ , and Sam sees his own sick helplessness reflected back, and neither of them can pretend any more, they can’t pretend ever again. 

 

Sam doesn’t fear Rowena the way he fears Dean. He doesn’t fear her judgment. But so much more than that, he doesn’t fear her _understanding_. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm never gonna be over this episode. Not if I live as long as Rowena. 
> 
> Check it out, I'm on [tumblr](http://www.katsidhe.tumblr.com) now, wow look at me joining the modern era


End file.
